Spiritual journey: Pastor visits the Dalai Lama

Thursday

Aug 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 28, 2008 at 3:50 PM

In many ways, Ed Hardy is a typical minister. But Hardy, the pastor at the First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Bridgewater, Mass., is also a Buddhist who recently returned from a pilgrimage to meet the Dalai Lama. He’s a retired bookstore, record shop and nightclub owner. And he’s an atheist.

Rebecca Hyman

In many ways, Ed Hardy is a typical minister.

He performs weddings and funerals. He preaches on Sundays. He rejoices with his congregants at the birth of babies and sits with them in the hospital as loved ones are dying.

But Hardy, the pastor at the First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Bridgewater, Mass., is also a Buddhist who recently returned from a pilgrimage to meet the Dalai Lama. He’s a retired bookstore, record shop and nightclub owner. And he’s an atheist.

“There’s nothing you have to believe to belong,” Hardy said of Unitarian-Universalism. “In fact, we encourage you to develop your own theology, whether it’s Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Pagan or Wiccan, whatever binds you to your life.”

As to atheism, Hardy said, “That’s OK, too. Non-believing is a belief.”

In July, Hardy went on a pilgrimage to Madison, Wis., to participate in group meditations with the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

Hardy, who recently completed his first year at First Parish, said he was moved by the Dalai Lama’s message of peace.

The Dalai Lama is amazingly down-to-earth, humane and relaxed, even playful, Hardy said. Still, he has an extraordinary presence. It was palpable when he walked in the stadium even before he spoke, Hardy said.

“A silence would sweep the coliseum,” Hardy said.

Hardy was struck by an exchange between a woman in the audience and the Dalai Lama, who each day answered several questions that had been submitted in writing.

The woman said her mother and two sisters had died of breast cancer, she has no health insurance and she’d just found a lump in her breast. She said she didn’t want her husband to worry and asked if she should tell him.

“He said, ‘This is very sad.’ He let everybody there take a moment to be with the sadness of it. Then he said, ‘I don’t know what you should tell your husband. You need to think that through. I can’t tell you what to do,’” Hardy said.

But that wasn’t the end of it. He turned to the head abbot and said if the abbot helped her financially, he would as well. He also offered her the services of his own physicians.

“He offered everything he could. He did pastoral care. He touched all of the realities,” Hardy said.

Hardy, who grew up in Natick, Mass., was raised an Episcopalian. He has two grown daughters, two grandchildren and lives in Abington, Mass., with his partner Kelly Gunz, who traveled with him to meet the Dalai Lama.

“My kids call me irreverend,” Hardy said with a chuckle.

In his previous professional life, Hardy, 64, owned 10 book and record shops from Boston to Florida and Pufferbellies, a nightclub in Hyannis, Mass., in a funky old building once used to steam clean railroad engines.

He began practicing Buddhism more than 20 years ago shortly after he joined Adult Children of Alcoholics, a support group for people who grew up with an alcoholic parent. In Hardy’s case, it was his father, who died of cirrhosis of the liver in his early 50s.

The problem was that many of the 12-step program’s principles mention God. Hardy thought he would have to drop out until he realized Buddhism would fit the bill without compromising his integrity as an atheist.

Hardy describes Buddhism as “a roadmap to train the mind for happiness.”

That means accepting that everything is always changing, rather than fighting change. Buddhists remind themselves of the impermanence of everything, not to wallow in sorrow, just the opposite, to disarm it.

Hardy said the Dalai Lama sometimes creates huge sand mandalas in the stadiums where he teaches only to sweep them up to illustrate impermanence.

“Buddhism says, as long as you’re trapped in not accepting things as they are, you’ll suffer,” Hardy said.

As to God, “Buddhists don’t want to talk about the next life or a heaven. It’s just a waste of time,” he said.

That suits Hardy’s own take on life.

“I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in a supreme being. I most assuredly don’t believe in an individual God, a God who’ll help me find my car keys or hit a home run.

“Woody Allen hit that God on the head when he said, 'if there’s a God, he’s an underachiever.'”

That doesn’t mean Hardy’s not spiritual. Spirituality is how you live out the values you believe, Hardy said.

“Do you go to church on Sunday and then act like a jerk the rest of the week? My teacher says don’t be a Buddhist, be a Buddha.”

It was through his Buddhist friends Hardy began attending a Unitarian-Universalist church on Cape Cod in the late 1980s and ultimately went on to attend Andover-Newton Theological School, from which he graduated in 1993.

“After one of my businesses failed and I was sitting there like a bird blown in from the ocean, I asked myself, ‘What do I want to do with the rest of my life?’” he said.

Hardy says he uses the word “God” often in his sermons, but he tells the congregation, “I’ll use ‘God,’ but you do the translation.”

“I’m inviting people to be in contact with their ultimate concern. For me, it might be compassion,” Hardy said.

He shares that concern with the Dalai Lama. He said he’s never forgotten a comment the exiled spiritual leader made in Boston more than a decade ago.

The Dalai Lama said, “My religion is kindness,” Hardy recalled.

“What more do we need? All of the philosophy and theology drops away,” Hardy said.

Bridgewater Independent

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